You can usually tell plenty about the vibe of a record from the early knockings.
In the case of Elaine Palmer’s “Some Seek Silver, Some Seek Gold”, that vibe is relaxed, warm, but also knowing and important. The title track drifts in with the confidence of someone who does not need to shout to make herself heard. “Sold our soul to the rock, to the roll,” she sings, and it feels less like a line and more like a life lived.
This is a transatlantic mini-album in every sense. Following last year’s acclaimed “Half Moon Rising”, Palmer began work much closer to home at Amberville Studios in County Antrim, a place once built for Van Morrison, before the record crossed the Atlantic to Half Moon Studios high in the San Diego hills, with producer and musician Mike Butler once again involved. That UK-meets-USA texture is all over these seven songs.
“I Still Feel The Same” is perhaps the first real killer moment here. There’s a plaintive beauty in the thought “I still feel the same way I said I did”, and there is regret in these words too, the sort that does not announce itself dramatically but hangs in the air long after the song has gone.
“Roses” asks whether this is all a pointless meditation on love, but the haunting harmonies suggest it matters very much indeed. It sounds as desolate as the moors Palmer grew up on, while “Once Were Lovers” has the feel of something shaped entirely by its environment: still, sparse, and full of things left unsaid.
“The Losing Hand” is more strident, particularly when Palmer sings of taking the mask off. There is a quiet strength here, the sense that she knows it is his loss. “Telling Of The Bees” is sheer class, Americana from the very top drawer, with instrumentation that is, as ever with Palmer, perfectly judged.
By the time “The Wildest Storms” closes things, the first impressions have deepened. Sometimes you have to dig a little further, and “Some Seek Silver, Some Seek Gold” rewards that. It is a gorgeous little mini-album: intimate, beautifully made, and proof that Palmer does not need much space to say an awful lot.
RATING 8.5/10
